There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
John RuskinRemember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
John RuskinMen are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.
John RuskinThe art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
John RuskinIt is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.
John Ruskin